A "Read the Bills" bill with teeth

[sratiug]

Rand keeps talking in his speeches about a "Read the Bills" bill, but I think he is off track because he wants to make congressmen sign a statement saying they have read the bill. That ain't going to work. We need a bill that says all bills must be read in the chamber in front of all members that wish to vote. If you are not present for the entire reading of the bill, you cannot vote on that bill.

I don't see how anyone could not support this. It seems to me that this would be the ideal follow up to the success (so far) of pushing HR1207. It provides for transparency and will display to the whole world on CSPAN that not a single person there can possible understand the crap they are writing now and could force them to stop this madness of 1000 page bills.

[Austin]

Rand keeps talking in his speeches about a "Read the Bills" bill, but I think he is off track because he wants to make congressmen sign a statement saying they have read the bill. That ain't going to work. We need a bill that says all bills must be read in the chamber in front of all members that wish to vote. If you are not present for the entire reading of the bill, you cannot vote on that bill.

I don't see how anyone could not support this. It seems to me that this would be the ideal follow up to the success (so far) of pushing HR1207. It provides for transparency and will display to the whole world on CSPAN that not a single person there can possible understand the crap they are writing now and could force them to stop this madness of 1000 page bills.

Yes, and any member not paying attention and instead updating their twitter (ala Eric Cantor during Obama's address) is barred from voting.

Will never pass.. but it would be nice to have someone introduce it and see how many cosponsors we get it. It'd be nice to be able to say "Congressman xxxxx refused to support a bill that would require all bills to be read before congress prior to taking a vote"

[TastyWheat]

Rand should also sponsor the "One Subject at a Time Act".

[New York For Paul]

Here is another bill to have a waiting period so people can look at the legislation.

http://wolf.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=34&parentid=6&sectiontree=6,34&itemid=1407

A Ron Paul supporter ran against him in the last Election. That was Vern McKinley.

Even though Vern lost, Frank Wolf was running scared. Wolfe hired much more campaign staff and by the end of the campaign actually increase his vote totals in Virginia when other republicans were losing.

Wolf is starting to pay more careful attention to his constituents now.

[lx43]

Join the DownsizeDC Army. https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/27

Read the Bills Act (RTBA). RTBA requires that . . .

Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.


Every member of the House and Senate who plans to vote in the affirmative – to vote for tax increases, for spending bills, for the retention or creation of programs, in support of laws and regulations – must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.


Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.


Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.


Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.


Congress cannot waive these requirements.

[Scott38]

I was thinking about this the other day while driving....

have they not created every possible law imaginable? Why do we need them any longer...we have 1000s of pages of code to tell us how to live our lives...right?

Time to pay them $1 a year and have them be grateful for the opportunity to represent us.

Scott

[FrankRep]

Good luck trying to get that one to pass.

[lx43]

I knowyou'll will think I work for this organization which I don't....I just fully support what they do.

Downsize DC spokesman posed an interesting question. Should members of Congress who are going to vote no on a bill be required to read it?

Any thoughts?

[rajibo]

And every time a bill refers to making a modification to another bill, the referred to bill must also be read in it's entirety.

That should slow things down.:cool:

[ladyjade3]

Realistically, simply allowing reasonable time to read the bills would be both a huge improvement and difficult to argue against. Kinda like auditing the fed. before abolishing it. I think its easy to push, easy to get behind, and flushes out the real enemies and makes them look like idiots when they attempt a counter argument.

mandate based models are much more difficult. Let's start one step at a time.

I like Dr Paul's simple, clean version. But then again, I'm pretty biased.

[Austin]

Realistically, simply allowing reasonable time to read the bills would be both a huge improvement and difficult to argue against. Kinda like auditing the fed. before abolishing it. I think its easy to push, easy to get behind, and flushes out the real enemies and makes them look like idiots when they attempt a counter argument.

mandate based models are much more difficult. Let's start one step at a time.

I like Dr Paul's simple, clean version. But then again, I'm pretty biased.

I'm not familiar with this, do you have a link?

[sluggo]

All of next year's Department funding bills are supposed to be passed and signed into law by October 1.

We believe members of Congress have time to put these bills together, and to READ them before they're passed. But they never will unless they're forced to.

This is why they should introduce and pass DownsizeDC.org's Read the Bills Act first. We encourage you to tell Congress to do this, and you may copy or borrow from this letter . . . (https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/27)
The fiscal year starts in October. This leaves you almost eight full months to . . .
* find ways to cut spending in each Department and eliminate needless and wasteful programs
* READ these funding bills
* and then pass them
This should be your priority. Do everything different from what Congress did last year when it . . .
* spent most of the year debating expansive NEW laws and bureaucracies
* increased spending everywhere
* did not have time to read any bill
* and passed funding bills months after they were due
If you remember, the 2010 fiscal year began Oct 1, yet . . .
* the 96-page Ag and FDA bill (H.R. 2997) passed (in final form) October 8
* the 1158-page Defense Authorization Act bill (H.R. 2647) passed October 22
* the 148-page Interior bill (H.R. 2996) passed October 29
* the 158-page Defense Appropriations Act (H.R. 3326) passed December 19
* the 375 (small print)-page Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 3288) passed December 13
This last, trillion-dollar bill bundled all the other funding bills into into one - months after they were due and weeks after Congress decided to debate healthcare instead! It was passed in such a rush, no complete version is found online except the small-print enrolled version!
This is intolerable.
* If the people's representatives fail to pass spending bills by the start of the fiscal year, this tells us Congress is incompetent
* And if you spend our tax dollars without knowing how they'll be spent by reading the bills, this tells us you are negligent
Pass the Read the Bills Act, and then get to work on cutting government spending and passing the bills on time.
END LETTER


(NOTE: The Defense Authorization Act funds military hardware; The Defense Appropriations Act funds personnel, operations, and maintenance.)

(https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/27)
You can send your letter using DownsizeDC.org's Educate the Powerful System. (https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/27)


We also invite you to add your blog or website to the Read the Bills Act Coalition. By joining, you help to spread awareness about the Read the Bills Act. In return, your site will be linked on our blog and be listed in a Downsizer-Dispatch with more than 29,300 readers. You can learn more and join the Coalition here. (http://www.downsizedc.org/coalition)


Finally, in January the House passed 19 bill totaling 371 pages, and the Senate passed passed 7 bills coming to 138 pages. You can see summaries of these bills and their length in the blog version of this Dispatch (http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/read-the-bills-act-they-have-8-months-to-get-it-right).


James Wilson
Assistant Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r - D i s p a t c h


Official email newsletter of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. (http://www.downsizedc.org/) & Downsize DC Foundation (http://www.downsizedc.com/).
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[Isaac Bickerstaff]

Join the DownsizeDC Army. https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/27

Read the Bills Act (RTBA). RTBA requires that . . .

Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.


Every member of the House and Senate who plans to vote in the affirmative – to vote for tax increases, for spending bills, for the retention or creation of programs, in support of laws and regulations – must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.


Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.


Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.


Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.


Congress cannot waive these requirements.

Sounds good. Now all we have to do is give it a name like "Kitten Protection Amendment" or something else inconspicuous and slip it in as an amendment to a 4000 page bill at 2:00 AM, right before a vote.

[slothman]

I was thinking of this.
Maybe just a week's time before submitting a bill andbeing able to vote "yea" on it.

I should write this to my representative.
Luckely she happens to be the chairman(chairwoman) of the rules committee.